


Just Play Along

by stepquietly



Category: On The Importance of Space Travel - Svetlana Chmakova (Comic)
Genre: Angst, Family Secrets, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stepquietly/pseuds/stepquietly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is real; they're just using different words to talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Play Along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novembersmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/gifts).



It starts out as a way to talk about how their family was breaking up, a language they can use to substitute for what's going on. Jeannie keeps asking all these questions about why Mom has to go so far away and why she won’t be coming home with them, and he says something in the heat of the moment. He remembers that, saying something flippant because he’s barely managed to figure it out himself. Even while they discuss moving out and him getting custody, he hadn’t really let himself think it was true until Jeannie looks up at him with _her_ eyes and asks, “Where’s Mom going to live?”

So he says, “Pluto,” because it seems to make sense. Because it's the furthest possible place from the two of them that he can think of and still name, and it's easier to explain it that way than talk about supervised visits twice a year.

It's a small break from struggling to find ways to explain this, and they take that and use it. Something that small spun out into an elaborate fantasy that lasts them the entire train ride from North Dakota to California, made more tangible by the things they find about them - the geodes he’d forgotten in his laptop bag became souvenirs of the Plutonian flowers, the bottle of pickle juice they absently packed for a snack thinking it still had pickles in it became the holding jar for the tiara that melted from interstellar travel, the letter her mom left on the dining room table gets turned into a royal scroll - it's all real; they're just using different words to talk about it.

It becomes a way for them to say things to each other. Jeannie can ask him about the accident and he can finally tell her about how the spaceship accidentally veered out of its own lane and cracked its hull on an inconvenient asteroid. Jeannie can accept that, and she isn’t old enough yet to question why the spaceship had veered, or how it was lucky that none of the people living on the asteroid were hurt. More than that, he finds he can use these words to explain to Jeannie that she is special: a beautiful and wonderful princess of Pluto, beloved by everyone that lives on its surface; and it’s not that they want it this way, but her mom has responsibilities out there that keep her away right now.

“I feel so heavy in here, Dad,” Jeannie says, rubbing her stomach with her fist, and he pulls her close into a hug, desperately loving but made awkward by how small she is and how he has to bend and wind what seems like too much arm around her.

“Me too. It’s because the gravity on Pluto is far less than that on Earth,” he says, trying to reassure them both. “It’ll take us all a while to get used to it.” He rubs her back gently, and then pulls back to assess her reaction.

She nods, thoughtful. “So it’ll go away? This feeling?”

He swallows everything he can’t bring himself to say yet and nods. “It will. Eventually this’ll feel just like home.” He's promising her that.

“Just like Pluto,” she says, and smiles while she turns the geode over and over in her hands, fascinated by its colours.


End file.
